The Boatshop at Strawbery Banke is a partnership between Piper Boatworks and Strawbery Banke Museum. Its mission is to explore and celebrate maritime skills, experiences, and tradition through hands-on boat building, workshops, lectures, and other activities.
The Need
As a wooden boat builder, Nate Piper — owner of Piper Boatworks and Founder and Director of The Boatshop at Strawbery Banke — was familiar with reprographics and had used them to produce scale drawings for past projects. Piper is currently working with Wood Island Life Saving Station Association in Kittery on a plan to build a replica Beebe-McLellan Power Surfboat, which would have been used during the station’s heyday in the first half of the 20th Century.
Instead of the actual scale drawings of the original boat, Piper had a photograph of the original blueprint of the boat design. However, what he really needed was a set of full-size plans to review with the leadership at Wood Island Life Saving Station Association. He also needed to be able to check dimensions, details, and layout from scale drawings when he went to view the last remaining original Surfboat at the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station on the Outer Banks in North Carolina.
Solution
Piper stopped into [AlphaGraphics] one afternoon on a whim to see if Eric could work his reprographic magic on his photograph of the original blueprint. In a matter of minutes, Eric was able to scale the image appropriately and produce a usable blueprint. From this, Piper will now be able to build a properly scaled half model of the Surfboat.
The Results
“There is no substitute for having a full-size set of plans of any project, but particularly this historic boat,” remarked Nate Piper, Director at The Boatshop at Strawbery Banke. “The full-size reproduction that Eric produced was invaluable when we went to survey the last surviving original boat in North Carolina. Once again, I am grateful to [AlphaGraphics] for their expertise and their fast turnaround.”
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Read our related blog, “Reprographics—Big, Bold and Not Just for Blueprints”
